In the delivery of fluid commodities such as fuel oils and home heating oils, etc., the present methods and systems for accurately recording deliveries, and for processing the delivery data at the home office are not entirely satisfactory. Much of the truck data gathered from the delivery of fuel oils is in the form of trip tickets and summary reports, which presently require manual handling. This manual handling is time-consuming and expensive.
In recent times, several electronic fluid register systems have appeared in the market place such as the new electronic Lockheed 840 System made by Lockheed Electronics, Plainfield, New Jersey, and the MID-COM 6500 System, made by Midwest Computer Register Corporation, Hampton, Iowa, etc. The essential change in these fluid registers is that the mechanical computation and register functions have been converted to an electronic method and do not reflect any significant expansion of operating capability. Sales information is still produced on printed paper for subsequent manual handling and entry into office located data processing centres.
The present invention seeks to overcome many of the data handling drawbacks of the prior delivery systems, while presenting new and useful improvements to the art of fluid delivery data handling. The subject invention contemplates the use of a new delivery method, fuel sensing and calibration system, and data network for displaying, printing, and permanently recording every fluid commodity transaction for each delivery vehicle, including the loading of bulk quantities of fluid. The invention features a portable data capsule which feeds pricing data to a delivery calculator and which records the billing data for each delivery.